Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
Dan talks about his book like he’s having a mental breakdown (HOSTED BY OllieEatsBrains) | Zombie Book Club Ep 61
In this episode of Zombie Book Club, the tables turn as Dan takes the guest seat in a wild and hilarious interview led by Ollie. Dan opens up about his off-grid upbringing in upstate New York, his time as a disabled Iraq war veteran, and his unexpected journey from truck driver to zombie novelist. Through laughter and moments of raw vulnerability, Dan shares how his life experiences have shaped his survivalist mindset and fueled his passion for writing about the apocalypse. Along the way, we dive into quirky topics like zombie chickens and composting zombie corpses.
Discover Dan’s unique approach to writing—balancing a chaotic work life with creative aspirations using voice dictation, and navigating the challenges of character development. With candid reflections on life, humor, and survival, this episode offers a mix of practical zombie apocalypse strategies and an insider’s look into the gritty world of zombie fiction. Whether you're a fan of the genre or just here for the laughs, this episode delivers something for everyone.
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Holly, thanks for the suggestion to talk about zombified animals. It really gave me a kind of having to think anything through this this.
Speaker 3:Is that what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yes, wow, I mean have you seen that bug lately? Yeah, did you see that beetle? Oh yeah, I've seen that a few times. That's terrifying, especially the way it's just crawling at the people yeah, yeah Well, bugs don't really need organs. No, just a couple little arms, yeah, and they're good.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where I have no idea what's going on.
Speaker 2:Sorry, one sec, I did forget one thing. Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is the host of a podcast who unknowingly becomes the guest of his own podcast. I'm Ollie, and when I'm not hijacking my Zombesties podcast, I'm admired my award for chicken zombie impersonation and writing short stories.
Speaker 1:And I'm Leah and I can't believe I kept this surprise interview from my husband for weeks now.
Speaker 3:And I'm Dan, and I have no idea what I'm going to say now.
Speaker 2:And today we are chatting with one of the founding members of the most influential zombie book club podcast, released on Sundays.
Speaker 1:Born in the wilds of upstate New York and raised in an off-grid cabin, dan's childhood best friend was Willie the Weasel and his favorite toy was a dead rabbit's head. But there's more to Dan than just his questionable friendships and wilderness survival skills. A disabled post 9-11 Iraq war veteran, he's seen some things, both on the battlefield and in a strange variety of jobs he's held since, From gaming streamer of Snake Fist Explosion fame to social media influencer to an unpaid horse camp counselor for my mom. Dan's resume is an adventure in itself. He's churned cheese at Kraft, sold tires and auto parts and is now a dump truck driver. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Dan is also a writer, and his writing journey started with telling tall tales to his elementary school teachers and writing smut for me, but now he's working on a zombie apocalypse novel. When he's not riding or driving trucks, dan's heart belongs to cute puppies, baby talk, drifting cars, making Lego creations and, of course, pizza. Dan, welcome to the podcast. Have you listened before, and who's your favorite host?
Speaker 3:I've never heard of this podcast before in my life. I don't know who you people are. How did you find your way in here? You made me sound very glamorous Glamorous In the intro.
Speaker 1:Are you surprised?
Speaker 2:I'm very surprised I started doing the intro and then I was just promptly told to shut up. Yeah, I had another one where I was going to interrupt you when you do your self intro, and in my version it just says I'm Dan and when I'm getting interrupted and then I just cut in yeah, I had to make a whole fake episode pop land with you today, wow, and I also did a fake episode intro.
Speaker 3:That's not going to be used. I'm glad my time was used so carefully that was the most nerve-wracking thing I've ever done.
Speaker 2:I'm not used to just interrupting people you did great, ollie, thank you.
Speaker 1:And when I started I was, I was ever done.
Speaker 2:I'm not used to just interrupting people.
Speaker 3:You did great, ollie, thank you and when I started I was, I was just like, I was like what I guess?
Speaker 2:I guess ollie's got something he's got to get out there yeah, something I got to put out there real fast just before we start well, ollie releases episodes every sunday, so subscribe to ollie uh, you dodged the question of who your favorite host is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ali is my favorite host of the Zombie Book Club podcast, that's it, I'm leaving. Thank you I hear that a lot. My second favorite host, though, is Ziggy.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I can't argue with that. He's very sweet right now in the corner lying down.
Speaker 3:And third favorite is Nero's Toenails. Oh, okay, I can't argue with that.
Speaker 1:He's very sweet right now in the corner lying down. And third favorite is Nero's toenails. Oh, yes, they are often guest starring on our episodes. Oh, the little click clack. Yeah, click clack, click clack, ollie, should we make Dan answer the rapid fire questions and make everybody else answer?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. I mean, what's the point of having him on as a guest if we don't ask the question?
Speaker 1:It's true. Okay, why don't you start with the first one?
Speaker 2:All right, Dan, these are just a couple of questions that we ask all of our guests, and we're going to have to throw them at you, Rufus, so Preference fast or slow zombies oh, if I'm watching a movie, fast zombies.
Speaker 3:If it's real life, slow, um, because, as my mri results would tell you, I don't have what it takes to outrun fast zombies.
Speaker 2:All right, that's uh. That's very fair. I would have to agree with that entirely, uh. Next question this is one of the biggest questions 40 hour work week or zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 3:you don't even have to finish that question. Zombie apocalypse. I don't even work 40 hours. And if they said you only have to work 40 hours, also, you have a different job, that's way easier and you get paid a lot more money, I'd still be like where's the zombies?
Speaker 2:give me zombies it's going to be really sad when we wind up in the zombie apocalypse and still have to do the 40 hour work week I think that is likely what's going to happen.
Speaker 3:Also, this will age very poorly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we get to the zombie apocalypse. We're all going to be listening to this podcast and just regretting our choice.
Speaker 3:This whole podcast is just going to get canceled. In the real zombie apocalypse they're like people just talked like they loved the zombie apocalypse. Terrorists is what they are.
Speaker 1:I mean, they did ask me if I was a terrorist when I immigrated to the United States. Yeah, what did you tell them? I said, no Good.
Speaker 2:Does anybody have an answer?
Speaker 1:yes, to that question. That is always what I wonder when I read those questions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would have said we prefer to call ourselves freedom fighters. That would have definitely gotten me my green card if I said that. Oh well, we love freedom in America, so you're welcome.
Speaker 2:Did they ask you if you were transporting any illegal substances as well? Me Leah.
Speaker 1:Oh me, yes. Actually, I was frequently told that I was probably transporting drugs across the border. I think I've told my tattoo story before, that I have a tattoo on my neck and they saw it and that made them absolutely convinced that I was a drug dealer, until they found the art supplies in my back trunk, the back of my car, and then it made sense and it was fine, I could go.
Speaker 2:So yeah, there you go. For any drug smugglers listening, just get a neck tattoo and some art supplies in your trunk.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you know you can't be in a gang and be an artist.
Speaker 2:If you were in a zombie apocalypse, what would be your weapon of choice?
Speaker 3:I'm going to go with. My current go-to is my cane that I use now to walk. It has a knife in it. It has a spear. It's also made of steel. I could really bash some heads with it.
Speaker 2:I have seen a lot of those advertised.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you've probably seen exactly the thing that I have.
Speaker 2:I had a question about your cane. I've seen a lot of videos of those being advertised and a lot of people buying them and then actually testing them and trying them out, and they always wind up being extraordinarily flimsy and just cracking over the softest materials. So I'm wondering how sturdy is it?
Speaker 3:I, I don't. I'm not testing it for that exact reason. I mean it feels solid, like it's. It's heavy, um, but you know, like it's all held together. They're all like individually threaded pieces of pipe that are hollow on the inside, so I can't imagine that it's going to take too much like force from from the side swinging it into something, for it to like bend or like strip out the threads probably can't take a great beating but if you're, if you're jamming down on top of it, it is made of steel, so um you know, so maybe use it more as a stabbing beer than like an actual baseball bat yeah, I can.
Speaker 3:I can take like the uh, there's this one part that's meant for like smashing um, smashing concrete and glass and stuff. I could put that on the bottom and that thing would would hammer, hammer things pretty good this is, of course, one of the infamous questions.
Speaker 1:You only get one unlimited shelf, stable food to eat for the rest of your life in the zombie apocalypse. What is it, dan oh?
Speaker 3:boy. This is tough because I'm a truck driver, so I live my life by shelf-stable food items. In the summer, it's the only thing that keeps me going during the day, and I hate all of it. I haven't found a single thing that I can eat excessive amounts of that. A won't kill me and B I can stomach for more than a couple weeks at a time. Man, I'm just going to have to go with a healthy option. I'm just gonna say beans, canned beans, because like they're, they're healthy and they give you energy. They're not in, they're not enjoyable to just eat canned beans by themselves, but it'll keep you alive, and that's more than I can say about anything else that I have to eat on a regular basis my answer would be rice so I think we'd make a really good team if I had unloaded rice, it's true we could.
Speaker 3:We could make, uh, red beans and rice all day long, minus all of the flavors. We could make black beans and rice. We could make more black beans and rice, bean soup with rice in it. That's true with wild forage mushrooms we're not allowed to forage, we have to only eat the shelf stable.
Speaker 1:Okay, what are you contributing to this as our uh please?
Speaker 3:say spices.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Ollie, what's your contribution?
Speaker 2:My contribution. I'll go spices Excellent.
Speaker 3:Which spice specifically? You can only pick one spice, but it can be like a combo. The container is the limitation. So if it's an Italian spices, that's a mix, so that's like an Italian spices like that's a mix, so that's allowable. But if you say paprika, we're just going to have paprika and rice all day.
Speaker 2:What about cayenne?
Speaker 3:Is that what you're going with Cayenne?
Speaker 2:Cayenne T-A-J-I-N. Tajine yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know what to use that for. I've seen it, but I'm like what is this? I've heard it's tasty.
Speaker 2:I put it in my mac and cheese.
Speaker 3:Ooh, all right, we're going to get some of this tagine from the store and see what it's like on macaroni and cheese.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I use it in my mac and cheese. I also put it in rice. I think I haven't used it in beans, but it's good in rice and mac and cheese. I know that. It's also good on tacos.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, we can have rice and bean tacos minus the tortillas.
Speaker 1:You know what? I think what we should do, if we ever get to all be together as a Zombie Book Club members, is we can have a shelf-stable food potluck and just see what like amazing things we could create with our item of choice.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like a stone soup situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Soup from a stone. Are you crazy?
Speaker 3:It's got lots of iron, yeah. Or like hot pot. Hot pot is very similar like communal food type situation where everybody just kind of puts random whatever in.
Speaker 1:So Ali came up with a couple of extra rapid fire questions for you, Dan, oh okay, Ones that you've never seen before.
Speaker 3:Unknown questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we talked about sharing with you the link to the show notes so you could see what's happening, but I actually like you being completely surprised.
Speaker 3:I mean that's kind of how I do it anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just keep them completely at park, you being completely surprised. I mean, that's kind of how I do it anyway I'll ask this one.
Speaker 1:Uh, the first one. You can ask the next one, ollie, what's the first? Thing, you would do in an apocalyptic zombie scenario um, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Everybody's like oh, this is, this is the place that I would raid, this is the whatever I would go do. I'm saying, right where I'm at, we're going to lock the doors, the windows, maybe even board them up if there's enough wood in the garage. Um, we're gonna, we're gonna hide our vehicles so they're not visible from the road. Uh, and then we're gonna stay downstairs and board up the stairs and throw all of the furniture into the stairwell and then we're going to do that for the first three days, just three days, yeah, first three days.
Speaker 3:I feel like it's going to be the most action-packed in the zombie apocalypse. If you can survive three days, you might be able to survive a year.
Speaker 2:Get through that initial chaos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Ollie as an actual zombie. What do you think of Dan's plan?
Speaker 2:I got to say I approve.
Speaker 1:Wow, zombie approved survival plan.
Speaker 2:Zombies love it. Well, as a zombie, I would have to disapprove on the zombie side, but I would approve of your survival tactics in the sense that that doesn't sound like it's going to be very easy for myself or my comrades and compatriots to get through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, if your compatriots get through, then we have to go to plan B, which is bashing heads, with my head bashing cane and my four foot long pry bar.
Speaker 2:Although, did you say you're going to throw all the furniture in the stairwell? Yeah, you also said that you're going to stay downstairs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we live downstairs, so we're going to clog up the stairwell with furniture.
Speaker 1:Like we're in the basement right now, so we would be in the basement with this, but also all the doors are barred and locked as well on the upstairs.
Speaker 2:I got you. That makes a lot more sense now. I was just thinking that you're going to clog up the stairwell, then live downstairs and block your access to the second floor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's how we're doing it. Isn't that what they did in Lee?
Speaker 1:Harden's book. No, they did the opposite. They were upstairs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were upstairs and blocked it in. Oh, did you see the lee harden shirt?
Speaker 1:I? Yes, we need to get the lee harden. And what's the other guy's name? Oh, that must be later in the course yeah, um, but yeah, there's a lee harden 2024 for president shirt.
Speaker 2:We need to get it uh, given his situation, I think he's the only option.
Speaker 3:He's running unopposed yeah, who is the opposition?
Speaker 1:we got the other 49 people in every other state there aren't that many left.
Speaker 2:I do think we discussed this last time. We concluded that the one running against him was Shovel Guy.
Speaker 1:That's right. Oh well, then I really need a Shovel Guy 2024 shirt. Yeah. If you're listening to this and you're new to us and you have no idea what's going on. Go back and listen to our remaining episode 55.
Speaker 3:And then, wherever DJ Mole mole is like doing a, uh, a convention or something, we need to go by his booth wearing a shovel guy for president shirt and, uh, flip all of his signs over dan, how do you think you would cope mentally and emotionally in a zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 3:well, you know, I, um, I took COVID pretty well. Solitude, desolate landscapes, these are things that make me feel great. It's why I love the fall. You know, I love it when everything looks dead and there's nobody around anymore. Yeah, so I mean, obviously there's some things, things you have to deal with, like, um, you know everybody that you know is dead, um, but I don't know very many people, so it's a, it'd probably be okay as long as as long as leah's still alive, of course. No offense to you, ollie, but well, I'm on the west coast.
Speaker 2:I've been, I've been dead for years's.
Speaker 3:Fine, yeah, you're already a zombie, so it's fine. Yeah, I will fly in that scenario.
Speaker 2:I do have one other question before we move on to talking about your book. Oh, okay, it is a. I'm just curious. When I was listening to Leah read your background and your history, I was just wondering, was just wondering about this how did you go from a backwards deliverance lifestyle to social media influencer?
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't know, I think, um. I mean I adopted the internet in in the late 90s because it was really the only way for me to find like-minded people. You know, living in a rural world, there weren't very many people that I would talk to who saw eye-to-eye on certain topics as me. A lot of people just wanted to talk about the Backstreet Boys and I didn't really. They were fine, I'm okay with the Backstreet Boys. Now We've buried the hatchet.
Speaker 2:That's good, because I had a follow-up question after you mentioned that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're not beefing me and the Backstreet Boys.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, my pathway out of that world was the army, and the only thing that I knew was that I was good at computers and wanted to leave, and the army was like you can do both of those things, and then I got out. So I've always been technologically proficient and that's always guided me to be like an early adopter of technology, including things like social media. You know, social media, the young people, the young people these days you know that that's, it's the. It's the first place that they go to. But when I was a kid, you were you're basically still a social pariah.
Speaker 3:If you lived your life on the internet, like what a fucking nerd that you're gonna go on the internet and talk to girls instead of in real life. Um, it's like and and now that's like the norm. But back then it was like it was like kind of looked down upon, so like I just kind of leaned into that. And then I'm like what are people doing on the Internet? And like people were like making cartoons, people were playing video games. And then I'm like this is, this is the place I want to be, because the real world sucks, especially when I was in the army and I felt isolated from the rest of the world. Right Going to the Internet was, was, was was the way to get away from all of that it also connects you and keeps you connected with the people that you know yeah, as long as they're on the internet too yeah, I'm sure glad I was on the internet and also a social pariah yeah me too, my teenage years social came together
Speaker 2:on the internet, did you? Did you ever have people tried to tell you to get off the internet?
Speaker 3:because everybody online was just artificial computer intelligence yeah, or they were, um, they were some uh, 40 or 50 year old sweaty guy and still living in his mom's basement.
Speaker 3:That's me pretending to be a teenage girl from canada who likes horses uh, the distrust of the internet back in the 90s is on its own level and, to be fair, those people existed, but I think I think we, you know, it was a lot easier to tell who was the sweaty, gross old dude living in his mom's basement pretending to be a teenage girl, who was really into horses back then. There's a lot more. There's a lot of tells. People didn't really know how to properly scam each other back then.
Speaker 1:You think so. I feel like it's way easier to tell somebody's catfishing now, because all you have to do is be like okay, let's have a video call.
Speaker 3:And if they make an excuse more than three times in a row, I'm like you're a catfish. You know there was. There was like a, a dark spot where it's like really easy way at the beginning, and then, uh, the dark age is in the middle and now it's like, oh, everybody has a camera on their phone, but now I think that we're going to be going into another dark age, because now there is AI, ai video and if you are talented with AI, you can generate images that look, in appearance, realistic and appear to have an image that resembles a person that is accurately modeled repeatedly, over and over again, so you can just do selfies all day of your AI personality.
Speaker 1:That's what I want.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 1:Apparently, I can make my own LinkedIn profile picture now with AI. I just take a shitty selfie and it'll make me look super professional. You can advertise that a lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's be AI now, yeah.
Speaker 2:I just use Bitmoji, bitmoji for Bitmoji. I am perfectly fine and content, being a cartoon for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that. That's where we're at in the world is that we can be cartoons professionally on the internet.
Speaker 2:That's what I do on Twitch. It's not all apocalyptic out there.
Speaker 3:It's almost. It's almost easier to trust somebody on the internet who is a bit moji than somebody who has just a picture that looks maybe a little bit too touched. You're like are you real? But you never questioned somebody who's like I'm a cartoon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with their legs on their table.
Speaker 2:So are you willing to answer a few questions about your book?
Speaker 3:sure why not. All right, you know we're, we're 50, what one, two episodes, 60, 61, 61 episodes into this podcast about? Uh, that's eventually just going to be me selling my book to people who, whether they want it or not. So yeah, I guess I'll answer some questions.
Speaker 2:Wonderful, all right, so I am going to start this by saying that I have never done an interview before. This is my first.
Speaker 3:So I have to admit.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I have to admit that I did steal some questions off of another interview for another author. Oh, okay, so I'm just going to start using some of those. So, dan, as a prominent black female author, sorry, one sec. Let me remove a few of these less relevant questions. Yeah, real fast All right?
Speaker 3:I mean I was ready to answer it, but oh no.
Speaker 2:All right, dan. What inspired you to write a zombie apocalypse novel?
Speaker 3:My life? Yeah, there's a long answer to this, but the zombie apocalypse is something that isn't just an interest of mine. It is something that expresses a lot of my anxieties about where the world is going, but also the world that I've lived into this point Everything from my time in the army to my time surviving the capitalist hellscape of being alive in America, to where that capitalist hellscape is going to go next. So it's a I don't have one answer for that question, but it's an obsession, because it relieves stress for me to think about everyone in the world being corpses and then trying to eat me.
Speaker 2:Does it help? Because you find it's. It's a world in which you feel like you can actually accomplish and do things, like your actions actually have accomplishments and and help um steady the world yeah, and I think a lot of people get this, this feeling also from like either being preppers or being off-gridders is like.
Speaker 3:It's like returning to this, to the world of of simplicity, where you're not so much concerned about, like you know, your linkedin profile and getting the next big corporate gig. You're like you know what I want to think about? What types of native flower species these butterflies like so that they'll be good pollinators for my garden? That's what I want to think about. What types of native flower species these butterflies like so that they'll be good pollinators for my garden. That's what I want to think about. And the zombie apocalypse like kind of forces that and eventually, once you get past all the rotting corpses and if you manage to survive the first three days, um, you can kind of you're, you're, you're living a more day-to-day experience where you're like I gotta get water, I've gotta find food, I've gotta I need a new coat because this one has a big zombie bite taken out of it and uh plus after your.
Speaker 2:After all those bodies start to rot.
Speaker 3:It would be great fertilizer wow, yeah, I don't know how good of a fertilizer most human beings are, um, I'm sure there's some diseases involved and but you know, once, once the decomposition um goes full tilt and, uh, you've just got some bones in the yard. I'm sure at that point your soil is looking pretty good.
Speaker 1:I think we need to compost them yeah for the optimal uh use for growing food. That would be the key how?
Speaker 3:how should we compost zombies, zombie corpses?
Speaker 1:uh, we need to mow the lawn, ironically, so that we can balance their decomposing flesh with some carbon.
Speaker 3:Ah okay, yeah, what if we burn it in?
Speaker 1:the sun. What if we just and?
Speaker 3:get ash, have some zombies that we set on fire, so they are full of carbon.
Speaker 1:See, this is I feel like you love the zombie apocalypse. This is my hypothesis. You love the zombie apocalypse because you just want to go back to your life in the cabin with Willie the Weasel and your dead rabbit head.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:Can I ask about that rabbit head?
Speaker 3:When I was a kid, I lived in a cabin that my parents built by hand, like literally, with a chainsaw and the will to live in a house, which I feel like people in this housing climate can identify with. If only they could have a house, if they also knew how to use a chainsaw.
Speaker 3:And have land, yeah, yeah, the land it was my grandfather's land. He had 150 acres and we were way back in the woods between two swamps, so it was really buggy. My stepdad went small game hunting and came back with a rabbit and after skinning the rabbit and getting all of the useful bits off of it, he was left with a suffered rabbit's head, and he didn't have much use for the head. I guess if you were really hungry you could boil it, but we weren't that hungry, we were hungry enough to eat a rabbit, but not hungry enough to eat the rabbit's face.
Speaker 3:But I thought it was really cute. I took it to my sandbox and I figured that if I dug a small hole and stuck the rabbit's head in it, it looked like the rabbit was sticking its head out of the hole and I just would pet the rabbit. So I wanted to show my discovery to my mom and stepdad, who were in, as far as I I knew, inside the house, as I was leaving the rabbit head behind. And I went inside and I'm like come, look at my rabbit head. It's like he's sticking his head out of the hole, like he's buried underground. And they're like oh yeah, let's go take a look. And when I came out it was gone. Oh no. And I'm like no, and I cried because I wanted to put it on my nightstand, I wanted it to be with me forever.
Speaker 3:And they're like they're like it would have smelled really bad. It's probably for the best. And I'm like no, I'm going to go look for it. It's probably in the woods. And they're like don't look for it. And what I didn't realize until I was an adult was that my stepdad was waiting around the corner of the house waiting for me to leave the rabbit's head. And then he ran up and grabbed it and like, hucked it off into the woods and then ran back inside so that he so that I would think that he was inside the whole time. Oh, and then they're like yeah, probably coyotes got it, uh, but probably I was going to suggest zombies.
Speaker 1:Zombies got it, they wanted the brains I think that story alone makes zombie apocalypse fiction as a love of yours makes sense. Yeah, uh, the best part is uh dan's mom telling me that she was worried that maybe he was um a sociopath yeah, they thought I was going to grow up to be a serial killer because I played with rabbit's heads but you didn't know, you were too young.
Speaker 3:Yeah, cute little guy ripped the rabbit's head off to play with it, that's a different story. I was like five or six. Yeah, you didn't understand death probably yeah I did because, uh, bunny, because we raised chickens and pigs and I do remember them cutting off chicken heads and watching the chickens run around without their heads on.
Speaker 2:Zombie chickens.
Speaker 1:Zombie chickens, zombie chickens. It's all making sense now.
Speaker 2:I've always thought that zombie chickens would be the most terrifying because they can live without their heads. So then, what are you supposed to do? Going for the brain doesn't work.
Speaker 1:I think you have to maybe cut their feet off First or second to do Going for the brain doesn't work, I think you have to maybe cut their feet off First or second, if the head, if they're still running around and they have no head and they're not stopping, I think you gotta get the feet next, because they can't fly.
Speaker 2:They can kind of glide sort of.
Speaker 3:They can flap their way around, for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, all their limbs.
Speaker 3:Just wait until they're just a big old. And this is how we get evil magic chicken zombies. When somebody's just like you know, I've got a solution for all these flapping headless chickens, we'll cut off their feet next, and then you get evil magic chicken zombies.
Speaker 2:Ah, the true origins they used to just be chicken zombies, and then you started decapitating and dismembering them, and now they're evil yeah, it's their that kind of evil origin yeah, it makes them evil.
Speaker 1:They are coming back for vengeance, yeah, against people, which I think is pretty fair as a chicken.
Speaker 3:They made a pact with the devil to be evil in exchange for revenge are there evil magic chicken zombies in your book?
Speaker 2:there are not, darn it don't worry, I'll put them in mine I I feel like mine's probably more appropriate. It would be more appropriate in my story than dan's.
Speaker 3:I'm guessing dan's is a much more serious story plot yeah, I mean I, mine's, mine's gonna be a lot about like um, it's, it's about people and you know, I, I've, I'm, I'm a pretty like um uh I can't think of the word uh, a purist when it comes to my zombies.
Speaker 3:Like I, I like very basic zombie rules. I I like there to not be an explanation. I want there to be very simple rules. I'm not even really a fan of evolutions of zombies because, as far as I'm concerned, they're just corpses that refused to be dead and continued walking around and doing stuff dead. Um, continued continued walking around and doing stuff. Um, so, like you know, it is hard to. It is hard, though, to uh resist, like, well, maybe there's a hulking tank zombie, maybe there's one with a really long tongue that walks on the walls. You know it's hard to resist those things. But, um, well, but you, you know, I want my story to be much more about, like, the struggle for survival of the people that we get to follow around. That makes a lot more sense. It's about what life means to them and their desire to continue life, even in a world that a lot of people think maybe there's no point left.
Speaker 1:What is the world that you've created like in your book?
Speaker 3:I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. It's like if everything stopped and all that was left were people, the stuff left behind by people and a bunch of corpses that are trying to eat the people, and the corpses don't really have a plan for what to do. After all, the people have been eaten, because I guess they're going to want to keep eating, but they're not going to have anything to eat.
Speaker 1:So the story is really about the zombies starving to death.
Speaker 3:It could be.
Speaker 1:Where is it set?
Speaker 3:where is it? Where is it set? Uh, right now, my story is starting in new york city. Um, there is, there's a group of people escaping long island and there's a group of people trying to get into the city at the same time. Um, and I don't know if they're going to make it. You don't know, I don't know if they're going to make it. You don't know, I don't know, I don't think they will.
Speaker 2:Well, I wish them the best of luck. I just had a brief moment. I don't remember what he, oh he said New York City, and my mind just went through this entire interconnected line all the way back to Blazing Saddles.
Speaker 3:New York City.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it was about that Pace commercial with the old cowboys in around new york city and then pace picante. Put me back on that beans commercial. Yeah, you know being seen from blazing battles.
Speaker 3:Put me back on the beans that you were talking about earlier salsa would be a great shelf stable item to choose it's true, it's not that shelf stable, but it is kind of shelf stable it lasts for a while and you can mix it with rice and beans.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 3:As long as you don't open it, it should last like a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Has anybody suggested granola bars?
Speaker 1:I don't think so.
Speaker 3:I eat like four granola bars a day, and I would just let the zombies take me if all I had was granola bars.
Speaker 2:Or what about like powdered Soylent?
Speaker 3:was granola bars, or what about, like powdered soylent? Yeah, I, you know, I drank soylent for a while and it gave me such bad heartburn after a while. Like it, like it just stopped being nutritious in any. In any way, I would drink it and I'm like I feel terrible.
Speaker 1:I'll let the zombies take me yeah, you had a subscription to soylent. Now I understand even more why you're pro zombie apocalypse. Your life has already been eating the things you would have to eat in a zombie apocalypse to survive yeah, I've.
Speaker 3:I've eaten so much shelf stable junk. I. I am sick of sweet chili heat doritos blasphemy, I love those. I can't eat another frito. I can't eat another pringle I can't I. I think that's the only three things you can buy in a in a gas station now hard topic shift.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us, like, who your top three favorite characters are in your book?
Speaker 3:uh, I mean, I don't know what it'll it'll mean to anybody if they don't know who I'm talking about, but maybe they're listening from the future. I've almost got too many characters.
Speaker 2:The rest of us will figure it out when we get there.
Speaker 3:I have my ricks of each group, the ones who are kind of the center of the story. Sometimes it changes. Sometimes I create a character and I'm like this is just a supporting character and then I realize that they are much more interesting than I gave them the credit for originally. Yeah, I have a character named Teddy, who's also called Teddy the Bear, and he's a truck driver and he just has a really big heart and also he's just a person that just doesn't know how to quit, despite the fact that he probably should. I've also got a character named Chase and she's a high school teenager and she's just really good at running. She's she's on the track team and what I like about her is that she's kind of like a blank slate a little bit, because she's so young. She hasn't, she's. She's.
Speaker 3:She's in a place where she doesn't know what to do with her life and she's getting a lot of pressure from her mom to like be a doctor or be somebody important, to like go to medical school, and you know, like her, her mother's always meddling and saying, well, if you don't know what you want to do, then just apply for medical school. And then she finally has to like have a meltdown at her mom and say, well, maybe I don't want to be a doctor, maybe that's why I'm not applying to medical school, maybe, maybe I just want to figure out what I want to do on my own and then go that route. And uh, and her mother, of course, is just she thinks that she's helping, she thinks that she's, she's guiding her, her daughter, down a path, um, that'll, that'll lead to success. But she's not taking into consideration that maybe she just wants to make her own choices.
Speaker 1:Or that a zombie apocalypse is coming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they don't know that yet. They find out, though they find out the hard way.
Speaker 1:Is there an easy way to find out that there's a zombie apocalypse in your book? Who has the easiest time?
Speaker 3:I guess you could hear about it on the news. Yeah, the person who probably has the easiest time learning about the zombie apocalypse is a character named Marcus Gray, who is a special ops soldier telling him from from verifiable sources all right information that he needs to then go into a really infested area to do something. Um, but also at a time where that information is being suppressed.
Speaker 2:so pertaining to Teddy, I do have one quick question. Yeah, is. Is his heart condition going to be an issue in the future if he can't find medications? You said he had an enlarged heart.
Speaker 3:Um yeah, but it's, it's a, it's like a grinch heart, though, so it's like it works better because it's larger okay I got you there. Yeah, he's well, he's a bear, he's, he's a bear. And bears have big hearts. If you've ever been to a's a bear, he's a bear and bears have big hearts.
Speaker 1:If you've ever been to a Build-A-Bear workshop, I have not, but now I need to build.
Speaker 2:Teddy the bear, I almost worked at a Build-A-Bear workshop.
Speaker 3:Yeah, almost, almost. Would you know what the perks of working at a Build-A-Bear workshop are?
Speaker 2:The perks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like, do you get free?
Speaker 2:bears or free stuffing? I don't think so I didn't get past the first interview, unfortunately.
Speaker 3:What is the interview like?
Speaker 2:at a build-a-bear. So it was at a mall and they took the entire interview right out in the middle hallway with all the people walking around and they basically just tell you to dance, be wild and crazy, and I, oh no, that sounds terrible.
Speaker 1:What is being wild and crazy has to do with building a bear. I don't like this.
Speaker 2:Because I guess it's because they want people who are very upbeat and very, like, energetic and very happy and excited and just eerie the whole day through. So they want people who are going to bring the kids in and be in a very nice, positive attitude the entire time. I think they do it similar to like how like how Disneyland does it where they have all their people be more or less in character the entire time they're there, and so you have to just maintain that personality the whole way through. And I can do that after like a week or two of being there and learning my responsibilities and what I can get away with, but I can't do that the first day.
Speaker 3:I wish they'd be honest about jobs like that, where they're like we are only hiring people who are willing to humiliate themselves right here and right now. Yeah, here and right now. Yeah. I feel the same way about, like, cold stone creamery, where, like if, if, if, if, if, you don't know if about cold stone creamery, it's an ice cream place and they take ice cream and put it on a cold stone and then mash it up. I don't know why that makes it better. Anyways, um, if you give them a tip, they are then required to sing a song for you, including, I think, your name, but to the tune of a pop song that is on the radio at at that era of time.
Speaker 1:I would rock that job. Wow, I think I've just realized I missed opportunity. Yeah, I will say, I've been singing songs about dogs. I can translate that skill to people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what were you gonna say, ollie? I was gonna say I've been at restaurants before where I've been in line and they'll see like somebody, a couple people up ahead like tip, and then they'll ring a bell and make a big deal about it and like, oh, I ain't tipping yeah, exactly, I don't.
Speaker 3:I would never tip at cold stone creamery not that I went very often but like I don't want anyone to sing me a song, I don't want anybody to make me, I don't even want them to notice that I've done it, I'm just like I just want to put the dollar in the jar and like there was a there's a comedian and I wish, I wish I remembered the name of the comedian, but they had a bit about this and they were talking about like if you walked up to a homeless person on the street asking for change and you gave them a dollar and said I want you to sing and make up a song about me and sing it really loud and happy and put on a smile, they'd be like that's humiliating, sir, please just give me a dollar, I'm starving, but at Cold Stone Creamery they're like I'll do, give me a dollar, I'm starving, but at cold stone creamery.
Speaker 2:They're like I'll do anything for a dollar. What if?
Speaker 3:you. What if you just put in a penny? They have to sing a song for you. Wow, any amount of money, there is no small enough denomination. You could sit there with a handful of change all day and just keep on flinging coins into their jar and they would just have to keep singing songs for you. And if you don't, if don't, you could complain to the corporate office and they would be fired.
Speaker 1:Is it possible to have this in your story?
Speaker 3:I think that's the story that needs to be told.
Speaker 1:I think so too, because imagine a zombie's outbreak is happening in the background with this and like you're the Cold Stone Creamery worker and there's a person who's flinging pennies at you all day. What would you do if that customer was attacked by a zombie?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know this is giving me a lot of ideas right now. I'm glad that we brought this up.
Speaker 2:You know, a while ago there was this fad of doing flash mobs, yeah, and I remember watching a couple of them, where somebody would walk by, find like a plastic bottle sitting on the ground and they pick it up toss it in the trash and all of a sudden every single person in the area would just start clapping and cheering and they'd bring out like a band to do a whole like yeah, you did it, sort of thing. And it gave me such anxiety when I walked down the street and I'd see something sitting on the ground and I'm like nope.
Speaker 3:I'm not touching it.
Speaker 2:I used to clean up. I'm not touching anything anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they really know how to make you not want to do anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think they thought about anxious introverts when they do flash mobs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very real, actually, speaking of an anxious introvert, what is it like to be randomly put on?
Speaker 3:the spot to talk about your book that is in progress, dan. You know I think about my book so often that, like I don't, I don't mind talking about it because I just have so many ideas in the works. The only thing that's hard about it is that, because it's in progress, I can't give you any definitive answers. So if you ask me a question, I might answer it in one way and then, uh, if, if you read it when it's done, you'll be like, what about the fucking flash mob? Remember the flash mob that we talked about? That's not in the book. It's the reason I bought it. I wanted the Cold Stone Creamery flash mob in the zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 2:I'm just like sorry, I wanted the douche flicking pennies at the customer. Yeah, I'm just like sorry I wanted to do that. I had a lick and pennies of the customer, yeah.
Speaker 1:I actually really do want that.
Speaker 3:I think it's a great idea and I do actually kind of want to work with work with that.
Speaker 2:That could be an opening scene Because, uh, I had weeks to prepare when you guys were going to interview me and I still was not ready for it. So going in this just completely unprepared, I feel for you.
Speaker 3:You know, actually, this this brings up something that I was going to talk about in our updates back when I was looking at the outline, that I thought we were going to do this. This week I I came up with a, with a different thing. That's not my book and it's a different book. And it's a different book and it's not the book that you would expect me to write. And I don't know what it's going to be. It'll probably just be a blog post, because I don't know if I can flesh it out to the size of a book.
Speaker 3:But, ollie, have you ever read a book called Save the Cat? Yes, for people who don't know save the cat, it's a very highly recommended resource for people who are learning how to write and also people who are just, uh, tuning their, their writing skills in general. And it talks about, uh, the three X structure and the 15 beats of those three X and how you know you can just follow these beats and make a story, and also the importance of these beats and like why you do want to want to have these things in your, in your book. And what I realized this week was that zombie movies, zombie stories, zombie books, zombie whatever follow a different structure that, like, like most most stories can be told with the save the cat 15 beat three act structure, but with the zombie apocalypse narrative it's different.
Speaker 3:There's there's different beats and there's expectations about those beats. Like and it's an unwritten thing that we just know when we're watching a zombie apocalypse movie. You know, for example, like the all is lost moment happens right at the beginning in the first act and we want it to be there. We want there to be the all is lost moment because the movie is about what happens after the all is lost. Um, there could be more all is lost moments later on, but there definitely needs to be one right at the beginning. And I started plotting this out and really kind of liking it. I've been calling it how to keep your zombie cat alive, because I couldn't just call it save the zombie cat, because that'd be copyright infringement.
Speaker 2:But yeah.
Speaker 3:I'll probably make a blog post, but why this is related is because actually I forget now.
Speaker 1:Why is it related? What were we talking about before Writing a book? And talking about writing a book? Oh well, I don't know why it's related.
Speaker 3:It made me think of it for some reason, but I guess I guess the point is is just that you know when, when you have, when you have a method to like, think about certain beats that you want to hit in a story, um, there's so many different ways you can hit those beats and you can, you'll, you'll write them and rewrite them a hundred times before, before the, the final version is done, um, but the important thing is that you, that you, you hit the, the, the elements of storytelling. That makes for a satisfying uh story in the end. And, uh, this is something that I'm working on and I'm going to I don't know, I'll talk about it more when it's more, more filled out Do you feel like the basic vision.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, Ollie.
Speaker 2:No, I'm sorry. What was your question? What Leah was talking.
Speaker 1:I was just going to ask if you think that your book, like your book as you have it envisioned right now, follows the zombie save the zombie cat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so. The zombie save the zombie cat? Yeah, I think so. Um, it is. It is just interesting that, like, we've, we've had this framework for like every other kind of story out there, um, but zombie apocalypse authors have just instinctively known what beats they need in their zombie apocalypse story and I think it's time to write it down. And yeah, I've, I've, I think, I think for the most part, I mean, I'm, I don't, I don't even know how many acts I'm in right now, because it's such a it's just, it's, it's chaos. I've, I've said it before, I've probably written 300, 300,000 words, two or 300,000 words, wow, and of those, I would say I have a good like 50 that I want to keep Wow.
Speaker 2:And only 50 words.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 50 words. And the thing is like I I keep on writing more and more and I'm keeping what I like and I'm throwing away everything else I'm not throwing away. It's like being put into a different I have. I have like 29 different files for this book and what I'm realizing is that a lot of my story is book two.
Speaker 3:Like marcus gray might not even be in the first book, I think he might be a second book character, and the thing that made me start writing this book was Marcus Gray, his character, special forces character on a mission to go save a government official who's solely responsible for the outbreak. He has to go save that guy even though they are the most responsible for the outbreak. He has to go save that guy even though they are the most responsible for what happened. And does Marcus Bray know that he doesn't have opinions because he's just there to complete his mission? I don't know what he knows. I don't think anybody truly knows, because it's like the world that we live in, where there's so many lies and so much corruption and so many back alleyed handshakes that you'll never know the truth and everything that's presented to you is a complete fabrication.
Speaker 2:Do you intend to have any of those answers in your story? Are you going to leave it all up to misinformation and just never really know what's going on?
Speaker 3:There's going to be a lot of misinformation, but I think it's important for me to give some information away, or at least let them know that everything that I've told them is wrong. Otherwise they'll be like I don't know. The whole zombie virus explanation wasn't very believable and I and I'd have to be the one to stand there and be like because it's a lie. Did you not get that? It's a lie. So I don't want people to believe the lie.
Speaker 3:I don't want to do too good of a job of lying about what actually happened, but I do believe that the hallmark of a really good zombie apocalypse story and there's plenty of stories that, like that, break this rule. So it's not, it's not like set in stone or anything, but, um, not giving away too much about why your, your zombie outbreak is happening, um, lets you focus more on what your characters are doing as a reaction to it. Um, instead of like trying to solve the problem, they are just trying to stay alive because ultimately it's a, it's a disaster story. You know you can't. You can't stop the earthquake, you can't stop the volcano, you can't stop the asteroid, unless you're bruce willis, um, and you can only just react to it what compels you to keep writing this when you have so much written down.
Speaker 3:But you know so much will actually not make it into your book and you're still figuring out some of the plot lines well, the good news is that a lot of it is going into book two, which means I have like half of book two already written, even though I don't know what happens at the end of the first book but it also makes chaos because, again, when I have so much written already and I don't even know where it's going, a lot of it might just have to be deleted.
Speaker 3:But I never really truly delete anything. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I have like 12 different documents, all with more or less the exact same stuff in it, except slightly altered, because I won't delete things, just make an alternate version.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah, I have to put version numbers on things like I'm releasing a piece of software.
Speaker 1:I kind of hope that you get like it would be really cool if, say, this takes off or doesn't. And you know you have like all three hosts of the design book club podcast I'm calling you a host right now, ollie, I guess including you by the book would you release like a unedited here's welcome to the mind of dan you know, I I kind of took like, um, uh, what's the name of the guy who made mad max?
Speaker 3:george, something, not george romero, different george, some other george, anyways, the guy who made mad max, all of his characters in the mad max universe have their own scripts, fully fleshed out, like they could all be movies, like the furiosa movie that just came out. That's because he wrote a script for furiosa while he was writing the script for mad max and the and the and the war boy that like joins them later in Mad Max also has a script and Immortan Joe has a script for his own story, and every single character has their own story. And that's kind of what I've been doing. Is like, even if a character I don't think is good enough to be like the main character, I'm just writing like everything that happens up until this outbreak. So like, maybe at some point, if, if people wanted to see, it's like, do you want to know what school, like the five?
Speaker 3:like a week of school for chase was like before the zombie apocalypse, when she had to go to attract me, and how many arguments she had with her mom about school and what, what her stepdad was watching on fox news because I've got it all right here it kind of I think that's a great way of approaching things yeah, I mean, it also kind of becomes a little bit psychotic in a way, because this is all information that's just bouncing around in my head and it helps to write it because then I can release it from my brain. Otherwise, this is like truck driving I spend all day just coming up with ideas because my brain isn't doing anything other than watching the road and whatever else I want my brain to do. Like I don't have to do complex thinking for my job and, um, so many ideas start to build up over an eight month period of not being able to write, and writing it down lets those ideas out so I no longer have to store them, which, uh, you know thing like storing them takes the place of things like birthdays and um doctor's appointments and you know knowing if, uh, if, nero and ziggy have been fed recently, um, so I kind of have to release a lot of that stuff that my brain has trapped. Um, otherwise I'm just like. I'm just like I gotta, I, I, uh, what?
Speaker 3:What's happening to Teddy? What's Leah? Is Teddy okay? And? And then Leah just looks at me and it's like you're trying, you're, you need to feed the dogs. I'm like, but Teddy, teddy will be okay, I'm like yes, but not in my brain. Okay, things are happening and I have to store it there or else I will forget the whole story. That sounds very stressful.
Speaker 1:Are there themes you're exploring through these stories that like underpin all of it, that sort of stay stuck in your head that you're trying to work out?
Speaker 3:Kind of, but they kind of come out organically and I think themes will come in the second draft. Right now I'm really trying to focus on only dialogue and actions. I want to tell what's happening and who's saying things and what they're saying, and then putting it together like it was meant to come out. That way is the second draft.
Speaker 2:What have been some of the most challenging parts of writing your first novel.
Speaker 3:Time Having time.
Speaker 3:Oh, I feel that um truck driving eight months of the year, you know, 12 to 14 hour days, um, and in some cases six days a week, is what they've been wanting to me, wanting me to work lately, which I've been telling them no, uh, it means that you just don't have any time for anything other than keeping yourself alive and going to work.
Speaker 3:But in the wintertime I get to focus a lot more on that and luckily I've discovered voice dictation and this has allowed me to do writing while I'm working, which is great because I've, like I said, I've had all those built-up ideas and I was able to just vent it out. But what that also means is that I have a run-on sentence that is all one paragraph, that is about 60,000 words that I now have to turn into real paragraphs that are spelled correctly and correct all of the mistakes that this dictation made while listening to me, because there are a lot of mistakes, so I have to. I basically, I basically have to edit now. So, like, voice dictation is great, but it also means that after all of that dictation, you have to go through and make sense out of it and turn it into real words.
Speaker 2:A lot of deciphering.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I forget what two words. I would say back to back. Um, oh, I, I was. I was writing chase's story and I would say chase and and then the name of her friend. That's also a problem, because I would forget the name of her friend and now she has three different names. Um, because I can't see what I wrote the last time, so I make up a new name. But anyways, I would say Chase and, and there is half of my story where it's either about Chase or it's about Jason, sounds like Jason, and I'm like I am really lucky that I don't have anybody named Jason in my story, because this was about to get really confusing.
Speaker 2:I can just imagine you first going in there. You hear the name Jason and you're like, oh, what tangent did I go off on with this whole new plot line story with a whole character that I don't even remember?
Speaker 3:creating. How did Jason get over?
Speaker 1:here. What's your plan when you're done work to like start to decipher this.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm just going to start at the beginning, and the good thing, though, is I have a system right now where everything that I've dictated and haven't edited yet I've put in red font. That sounds really obnoxious to somebody. It is painful to look at, but as I go paragraph by paragraph, I'm going to change that back to black font. So if it's black, then it's good, and if it's red, it needs work. Then there's some that are green and some that are blue, and I don't remember why I did that.
Speaker 1:Why you highlighted those colors.
Speaker 3:I think I just needed to change things up because I was like I don't know where I'm at anymore. I'm 60 pages into this paragraph.
Speaker 1:Oh, goodness, I need it to be blue. I really admire writers like you too, because it feels like it feels terrifying. Honestly, when I think about the process that you go through to figure out a story and you I don't know, it just seems really overwhelming and daunting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know, I I tried to to, I tried to save the cat. I tried it. I was, I was recommended following following the 15 beats of save the cat and when I first started I'm like I'm going to make a simple story, it's going to be very basic, it's no frills, nothing special happens. It's not even gonna be good, and what I realized was that it kind of takes over and uh, starts writing itself and now I have no control over it and it's become this huge thing that now I I am desperately trying to tame and it's like I will not be tamed. These words will come out, you will write them, and I'm like there are seven characters that have have their own plot lines that I didn't even sign on for.
Speaker 2:I don't even know who these people are, they just showed up well, I think that answers my next question, which was uh, have you encountered any unexpected twists or surprises while writing?
Speaker 3:yes, yeah, I mean I'd I'd like there to be a formal study about the mental condition that writers have when the writing starts taking over, because I don't know what to call it, but it does feel like there are people alive inside of my brain that I don't have control over. They don't take control of my body, luckily, but they do take control of my writing, and it's a lovely place to get to if you're trying to write, um, but also it can be, uh, pretty weird when you look at something that you wrote and you're like I don't know how this happened. I don't know, I don't know how I came to this conclusion. I have a character who I was like yeah, yeah, this person's just trying to escape a building and then they're gonna get on a helicopter and leave. And now I stopped writing that character because they're about to jump off the roof and I'm like how did this? No, stop, you're gonna ruin everything. You can't jump off the roof, and it's and's just like I'm not listening to you. Does that destroy your?
Speaker 2:entire plan.
Speaker 3:It doesn't. But it also means that I have to stop there until I know where the rest of the story goes and then see what he does. I'm going to go see what he does. That's my writing process. I tried to be a plotter, I tried to follow the beats and then the pantsing took over. The pantsing was like I know that you are in your first act, but let's try something and, honestly, making the beats work. It just comes naturally. And maybe it's just because I've seen so many movies, I've watched so many shows. It just comes naturally. And maybe it's just because I've seen so many movies, I've watched so many shows. It just comes naturally. But I think when you start telling a story like we have instincts about telling stories that goes back at least 3,000 years that we know of Longer.
Speaker 1:Storytelling is like innate human behavior.
Speaker 3:I just mean, as long as we know of the oldest stories that we have access to follow these beats. And if you don't follow those beats, people are disappointed. They're just like what kind of story was that? It was way too long in the beginning, at least, at least 30 seconds too long by the half point, and it all like all these calculations just happen automatically, and I mean it really does make me wonder how long we've been following these rules telling stories, because we really just we want to be told the same story over and over again, just in different ways, about different people, and we want our lives to fit these stories too. We want, we want the happy ending, but we know that we have to have the darkest moment and we have to have the inciting incident. All of those things happen to have to happen in our life for us to get to the happy ending. Hopefully our life is a comedy and not a tragedy.
Speaker 1:Or a comic tragedy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about anymore.
Speaker 1:That's okay, Ollie, I feel like I think you're going to ask something.
Speaker 2:Sorry.
Speaker 1:Maybe the train left that station.
Speaker 2:I had something that was just gonna derail things and I decided not to say it. It was when Dan was talking about saving the cat just a moment ago. I stopped and my mind went off on its own little tangent and I went with. I started thinking about what I was writing. I was like, oh, did claire saved a cat? Oh, no, they killed a bartender.
Speaker 3:Never mind well, you know, and save the cat, they the. The saving the cat is uh, is an act to establish the. The character is um the hero is the hero in some capacity and there's redeemable. Yeah, they say, you don't always have to save a cat. Literally, sometimes you might kill the cat. In all the character. Who's telling the story?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like in your case, ollie, that was a really, really compelling moment of killing the cat slash bartender Because, because that actually made they do have a conscience, they feel pretty upset about it. Dan, do you have a favorite zombie? Like, scratch that question, that's not what I meant to ask. What's your biggest inspiration?
Speaker 3:Fuck, I don't know, especially at this point. You know, if you asked me, like three years ago, I'd say I don't even know the uh.
Speaker 2:What was the?
Speaker 3:first book that we that we read on zombie book club plague of the dead, plague of the dead. Yeah, I remember reading that and being like, oh, I could write a book about, about a zombie apocalypse, and and it would be cool and fun. But now there's, like I, I consume movies and books based on how, like, what I want to learn from those books, like what, what I, what I want to understand, or what I, what I want to feel, the types of characters that I want to see, how they survive. So, like right now I'm reading lm juniper's uh book, how we end. Is that it how we end? Yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 3:And there's, there's so much great like character dialogue in that like it's, it's a, it's definitely like a, like a, like a chosen family kind of story, um, and you know, you can, you can, you can take, you can take things from that that you're going to learn from. And like, try to apply. And then like same with dj mole's book, where I'm like the, the gritty realism I really love about, about, about this, um, and then like the walking dead and the last of us, and like every movie that you watch, there's always something that's like I love this little piece of it and I'm just trying to fit all of it together to make the story that, um, that satisfies all of my zombie cravings, because, you know, the the one thing that satisfies all of my zombie cravings, because you know, the the one thing that satisfies all of my zombie cravings hasn't been made yet what are all of your zombie cravings?
Speaker 3:I don't know, you know, I, I love the hyper realism, but I also love the comedy of sean of the dead. You know, I, I love the story of a plucky underdog, but I also, um feel the need to tell a story about somebody who has survival skills, so like I need so many characters to tell this story because I, I have so many stories to tell, because I've been so many different people. You know, I've, I've, I've been, I've been the, the soldier who you would probably want next to you in the zombie apocalypse, because I was a naturally gifted marksman. Naturally, because I shot my BB gun like every single day of my childhood.
Speaker 2:And I've heard you have amazing eyesight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Amazing eyesight. I ate my carrots. I was always told that if I ate my carrots I would have good eyesight, and I can't deny or confirm, Because I ate a certain number of carrots and then I also avoided eating a certain number of carrots and I have, as far as I know, 2008 vision. It could go lower. I think that's unheard of.
Speaker 2:I'm a literal eagle-eyed.
Speaker 3:But I've also been where I'm at now, where I need a fucking cane just to walk. More than five minutes Standing for a few hours at a wedding makes me have to call in sick a few days later when I get back home because I just can't bear standing up. I've been the person that could rebuild a race car, but then the person who lacked the motivation and mental clarity to do anything at all and just wanted to eat Cheetos and watch TV. I've been all those people and now I want to write a book that has all of those people in it.
Speaker 2:All those different parts of you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I don't realize it when I create a new character, but when I look at it I'm like, oh, I was this person at some point, even Chase, who's like a track star. I was never a track star but when I was in the army I was an athlete. I was a paid athlete in the army because physical fitness was such a big part of my job, like we did it every day. It was more important than actually being good at my job. I could have been an absolutely terrible electronic warfare expert, but if I could run fast and do pushups I could have made my way all the way to 20 years in with all the medals, all the awards, whatever rank I wanted, because the attrition was so high. It was really easy to advance in the field that I went in. I would have came out a sergeant major easily if I stayed in 20 years, years, and all I would have to do was just run and do push-ups and say yes and say yes, say yes to everything I'm really tempted to.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, go ahead, ollie I was just saying you say yes, sir uh, not if you're talking to an nco.
Speaker 3:If you do that, they punch you in the face what's an nco?
Speaker 1:a non-commissioned officer, right? Yeah, yay, I remembered. What do you say to an NCO?
Speaker 3:You call them by their rank. If they are an E7 to an E5, that is sergeant. If they are an E8, it is first sergeant, unless they are a master sergeant, and if they're above that it's sergeant major or a command sergeant major.
Speaker 1:I have one question for you, because there's a character that you've told me a lot about, which is your politician character. Yeah, are you willing to name them here? To name them, yeah I like to say their name. They're not real. Uh, one can extrapolate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll name them, but I'll be honest, I've come full circle on what their actual position in the government is.
Speaker 3:Oh, and I haven't fully decided yet I didn't know that um, I started off with a senator and I wanted it to be a senator because I want it to be ambiguous as to who is in the line of succession to be president, because they just don't know about the president. They just don't know, um, but I've come full circle. He's a governor. Despite wanting to not confuse people about the character of the walking dead, the governor, um and uh, the reason I chose that is because he would have more of a stake in what's happening in new york city as well as he would have control over the National Guard.
Speaker 1:Well, this character is despicable. I mean, nobody else knows a bunch about this character except for me because, ollie, most of my insight into Dan's stories is when we go on dog walks. That's when I get to like I think that's part of the way that you help, just get it out. You're like this is what's happening in my story right now.
Speaker 3:Before I had dictation, I dictate to me, to you and the dogs yeah, walking and that character is despicable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and it's not that hard to imagine a character like this governor, because we have tons of them, uh, in positions of political power today. But when you say that you realize that so many of these characters are yourself or like facets of yourself. Does that stand true with this like really shitty politician?
Speaker 3:I think it could be. I think that in life there's all these things that happen to form who you are and all of the things that happened to me. I made decisions to get to the point where I am now and have the values and morals that I have. If I made different decisions, I would be a different person in the end. Um, and you know when, when I was, when I was growing up, I wasn't. I don't think I was really taught to be moral. I think I was.
Speaker 3:I was taught at a very early age that, like, if, if you, if you lie and you don't get caught, it's not a lie. Um, if you know, like, if you, if you lie and you don't get caught, it's not a lie, if you get away with it, it's not illegal. I don't know where these things came from, because I think my stepdad was a pretty moral person. I just think he also had this kind of weird way of looking at the world and that kind of got passed on to me and I had to make a decision at some point whether or not I was that person. So I think that if I'd been taught these things and I decided that they were correct, I could have gone down this path and gotten to a completely different point in my life where I valued wealth and power, where I would do things because I could get away with them, and I could look at people and value them based on what they can do for me. And those are things that I've rejected in my life and I've made actual decisions about how I'm going to feel about those times, and I could have easily become a person who was this, this character, because I don't think that we're born with the values that we have. We, we form them based on whether or not they're important to us and people. Some people decide that, uh, they will be valued and they will value themselves if they do whatever it takes to make money or if they do whatever it takes to advance, and some people decide that those values are not important to them and that they would rather do whatever they need to do to have, um, a peaceful, quiet life and to treat people around them uh, like like people and see them for people.
Speaker 3:And I was a soldier and everything about that experience could have made me feel like there are certain people in this world who are not people, and it would have been a lot easier for me to process a lot of the things that I had to go through if I just accepted that they're not people that I had to go through, if I just accepted that they're not people. Um, but one of the first things that I remember feeling after the Iraq war is these are people just like me, the, the Rocky Republican guard, who was the army of of Iraq. Um, they, they were answering a call to defend their country against the United States and they were overpowered and overwhelmed and all they could do was just slow us down. That was the only thing they could do. They weren't going to win, they weren't going to repel us and their own government was forcing them to fight by threatening the lives of their family members and saying that their family members would be executed if they didn't fight.
Speaker 3:And in a lot of ways, I I feel for those people because they were put into an impossible situation to fight, uh, an overwhelming force that they had no chance against basically be told to sacrifice yourself for the safety of your family yeah, and that's, and that's what many, many of them did did, and I and I feel for those people because, you know, at the time, you know I'm just like, yeah, we're fighting a war and all's fair and in love and war and whatever, whatever else people say about war that makes them feel better about things.
Speaker 3:But realizing it after was like, yeah, if I'd been born Iraqi, I would have been one of these people and who knows if I would have survived that war or if, after the war, maybe I would have joined some other group that hides in residential areas and takes moments of opportunity to continue fighting that war, to repel your enemies who have have shown you, uh, no mercy and you don't want, uh, taking over your country anymore. So, yeah, we could be, we could be many people in in our universe. It's, uh, it all depends on, like, how you process the moments that you go through and the decisions that you come to based on what happens this is why I know your book's going to be good, yeah I can see myself in in the shoes of so many people.
Speaker 3:Something that I remember from a very young age is that I could literally look at somebody and then project what it would be like to literally be standing in their shoes and I could see things and I could imagine what their life would be like yeah, I mean even in our relationship.
Speaker 1:Just for a moment to make it a little personal, ollie, something that Dan does that I think if anyone else did this I'd probably at least verbally punch them is if I'm going through a hard time where I'm trying to understand something, sometimes Dan will just like about my own life experience. Sometimes Dan will just be like well, I think you're feeling this way because and then it's like he's inside my head and he helps me make things clear that I can't make clear on my own. But it doesn't feel like unsolicited advice and it doesn't feel like judgment and it's like a really special gift that he has. So I think you do have a special gift of like empathy, I guess, is maybe the word for it. I don't know.
Speaker 3:Maybe I'm an empath. I should just scream I'm an empath at people.
Speaker 1:Wear an amethyst necklace, yeah.
Speaker 3:Just go in and just be like listen everybody, I'm an empath.
Speaker 1:Ollie, what questions have we not asked that we should ask?
Speaker 2:Not sure I'm going through the list right now. There were a couple, I think he just kind of answered.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I really went on a tear. It was good.
Speaker 1:It was a good tear.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. You're like the absolute perfect guest, like I do this all the time. I've done so many podcasts and you are the perfect guest because I don't even have to ask questions. You a perfect guest because I don't even have to ask a question, you just answer them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it's.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's my first time it's your first time being a guest. Yeah, um, I have a question for you, dan. Yeah, do you have? Well, you say you I'm like making shit up. Hold on, let me look at these questions again. So am I. We all are, um, oh, go ahead, ollie.
Speaker 2:I do wonder because, like I have, like oftentimes, when I read people, I look at their or read other authors. I see you know patterns and such and I watch how they build and structure their stories and how their sentences are built. So I was wondering are there any authors who have influenced your writing style?
Speaker 3:I don't know, because writing style is something that I have a hard time grasping. I had to Google it a few years ago because somebody started giving me writing advice and they're like you got to find your voice. These are the elements of your voice. This is how you find it. I'm like what is the writer voice? I'm like asking people and they're like it's, it's just how, it's just how you write. That's like your voice is your style, and I'm like what is writing style? Um, I think I'm most like stephen king.
Speaker 3:I like the way that he is almost he's. He's. He's telling third person narratives, but he's telling it like he's telling you a story that he is almost he's. He's. He's telling third person narratives, but he's telling it like he's telling you a story that he heard right, so he's. So he's like he knows everything that the characters are doing, thinking, feeling, and he's describing those things, and he'll just be like like yeah, and then the character, uh, uh, realized that they know this thing and they don't know how they know that thing, but they know it somehow. And I'm like that's, that's real, because I I find that there's times when I feel like I know something and I'm like but how do I know that? I don't remember. So, yeah, I don't know, I guess. Uh, I guess I'm going to find that out when I'm in my second draft, because right now it's I'm just, it's just the facts, and it's pretty.
Speaker 3:It's pretty dull right now. If you read it you'd just be like falling asleep, uh. But draft two is when I'm going to have to really start thinking about that. And, um, actually this this week I've been kind of thinking about that. I'm wondering how I get a more conversative tone, because that's kind of how I want it to be. I want it to seem like, as the narrator, I am telling you a story that I know, even if I'm not actually a named character in the book. The words are coming from me me and you are reading them in my voice.
Speaker 3:You should do your own audio I would do my own audio book if I could fucking read, which I uh. There's been so many times when I've just like had things that we've had to read on this podcast and I've just had to delete it because I did such a poor job of reading and talking at the same time and I'm just like am I illiterate?
Speaker 1:No, but you probably have dyslexia?
Speaker 3:I probably do. I've always kind of felt that I have some level of dyslexia.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, how do you plan to engage readers once you've got the book ready to go?
Speaker 3:don't know I plan on just begging um, mostly through this podcast, just being like please, please, read it. Um.
Speaker 2:Also, don't give me any negative feedback, because I don't think I can handle it so the plan is to create a highly popular zombie podcast that releases on Sundays to promote your book.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or, you know, mildly popular. Either one, I'll take it. I'll take what I can get.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that you've always been 100% transparent about that, because that is where this podcast happened. We were at breakfast at our favorite diner and I said, dan, if we have a book club podcast, people will know you and want to read your book.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you also told me this several times before I finally believed you. Yeah, and I think it took like two and a half months for us to finally do it. At least Wasn't it when we got back from Jamaica that we started.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was the mushrooms. The mushrooms told us to make a podcast. Yeah, I'm kidding, but they might have influenced us a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes sense. Mushrooms have a connection to zombies, so they may do speak, as always.
Speaker 1:That is true. The episode that we all thought or we, dan thought we were doing today was about real-life zombies. Yeah, from mushrooms cordyceps.
Speaker 3:I was researching cordyceps in greater detail so I could have some real gems to fire back and I was prepared for a Cordyceps-themed podcast.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, we did wind up talking about a subject that you know a lot about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:If I didn't know anything this would have been a really weird conversation.
Speaker 3:Dan is there anything you'd like to promote, oh boy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where can people find you?
Speaker 3:uh, people can find me mostly on threads, to be honest. Um, dan the zombie writer, I've been known to be on instagram. Um, our podcast is on instagram zombie book club podcast. Um, and leah does most. I've heard of that one yeah, leah does, uh, does most of the most of the replies, most of the everything. On Instagram I occasionally make a meme, like I did this morning.
Speaker 1:While I was sleeping I woke up to Dan making the meme about our survival pack for day one of the apocalypse.
Speaker 3:Day one survival pack. That was this morning, baby. But yeah, dan the zombie writer is pretty much all I have time for these days, and I don't even have time for that. I have time for like one post a week and ollie, where can people find you?
Speaker 2:uh. They can find me on instagram or uh or threads ollie eats brains, also ollie eats brainscom where you can find all my stories that's the place to go for maze.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the zed word which I have not read yet yeah, I started just said not the zed word, sorry ollie, it's mixing things up okay literally all the titles on that website are just quick one-off things that I label, so I know which story I'm working on they're.
Speaker 2:They're not titles yeah the same.
Speaker 3:My book is called uh uh dead reckoning. I don't know if that's what it's going to be called when it's done.
Speaker 2:We don't know but you have no idea. Dead reckoning or is dead reckoning?
Speaker 1:dead reckoning okay, I heard zed reckoning for zed reckoning I kind of like that yeah, it's not bad so this is completely impromptu, ollie, and you can say no and this can be cut, but we have to do our little like oh, you already said no.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say I'm happy to go read for you if you want yeah, I think because we always promo the book we're gonna be talking about on episode 65, so I thought it would be an awesome opportunity for you to give people a preview of why this book is great and why they should read it with an Ollie's Zombits.
Speaker 2:All right. So here we go the Z Word by Lindsay Kingmiller. This is given four out of five brains with a plot. Wendy gets edged and being blocked by the zombie apocalypse. When a pride event weekend gets a lot more intense than anyone could have anticipated, and my thoughts on this whenever things seem most bleak, you can always find sunshine. This story is about an awesome stoner pizza delivery driver having to continually rescue a group of lgbt friends. Just kidding, it's about wendy, a recently single, awkward bisexual struggling with the emotional wake of a messy breakup while also dealing with a zombie apocalypse. Also, she just can't seem to catch a break as every sexual encounter is interrupted before she gets hers.
Speaker 2:It's the week of Pride Festival and everyone is having a good time drinking, dancing and getting social, until the zombies show up. While Pride is all about inclusivity, that invite generally includes only those who can conduct themselves appropriately in a social environment, and these zombies are much too violent to hang out with. These infected, while maintaining a good deal of their motor skills, thought processes and some ability to speak, have tendencies towards outbursts of extreme violence and murderous desires. The Z-word not only builds a world of rage zombies, it also offers social commentary on corporate rainbow washing companies commercializing LGBT identities for profit and public praise. From slaughtering the infected to taking a side quest, hunting for meds, the Z-Word is an exciting, fast-paced story that prioritizes plot and character over lengthy flower descriptions. There's even a chapter from the perspective of an infected, which is something that new and exciting that I have not seen before the end yay, I don't know, that's really loud in your ears, sorry, it takes everything in me not to uh laugh.
Speaker 1:Track over you talking when you read your zombits.
Speaker 3:That was so good yeah, I, I also totally forgot that. That uh, wendy poor wendy yeah, never gets it never yeah I actually didn't think about that. No, yeah, we need to consider wendy's needs more I mean, that's lindsay's choice, yeah well, I did include a little bit extra on the top corner.
Speaker 2:it says parental advisory explicit content. Well, I did include a little bit extra on the top corner. It says parental advisory explicit content. Yeah, just kidding, don't tell your mom about this, but it's very mature.
Speaker 1:Don't read it at work, don't tell your colleagues about it or do, but it's a great one and I think that's a perfect zombie for the Z word by Lindsay King Miller. It's coming up four episodes from now, so if you haven't started reading it yet, now is the time. Yeah, it's coming up four episodes from now, so if you haven't started reading it, yet now is the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, You're running out of time, but what a time it'll be when you read it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just know that you're not going to get any. If you're thinking of yourself as Wendy, is that awkward?
Speaker 3:that I just said that.
Speaker 2:Very awkward. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:Just delete that I know you're not going to, totally gonna delete this.
Speaker 1:This is the worst not having control of the editing. In the meantime, you can call us the burning question a zombie apocalypse. Tip that you might have a story of survival, whatever you're feeling, at 614-699-0006, or you can email us at zombiebookclubpodcasts at gmailcom. I got rid of our obnoxious auto reply because I felt bad about it and I'm trying to respond more often wow, that's really nice of you.
Speaker 3:I'm trying. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review.
Speaker 2:Uh, five stars please is it too late to ask dan for an elevator pitch?
Speaker 1:No, do it.
Speaker 3:Oh boy, you know what Most people who give elevator pitches you know have a plan. So here's my elevator pitch. It's an untitled book. It might be called Dead Reckoning or it might be called something different. So check out your local bookstores for this book that may or may not have a name and we don't know when it's coming out. We don't know when it's coming out. This book might follow a character named Teddy and it might follow a character named Chase. I don't know yet, but there's zombies involved and they run away from them. Beautiful. Also, stay tuned for things that lead into a much more interesting second book, which I have halfway written, even though my first book is maybe one third of the way written. Thanks for letting me do my elevator pitch, leah.
Speaker 1:Very nice, Stan Bravo. Good question, Ollie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so keep your eyes peeled and look out for that on the shelves in about 20 years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe I'll be able to do it in 20 years. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for joining us, Stan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been a pleasure to be here. Weird that I'm in the studio in person and you're tuning in from the West Coast.
Speaker 1:Ollie and I are the hosts now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's just the power of podcasting. Yeah, the power of the internet.
Speaker 3:Yes, you're going to be a guest on this podcast. Okay, I'll be there. How come nobody else is here?
Speaker 1:oh, they're coming in remotely remote hosting this is where we say bye, everybody bye.
Speaker 3:The end is nigh in a wild crocodile alligator what an interesting episode this was Well, I hope you enjoyed it.
